


A Dream As Real As Life

by Rozarka



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Humor, Community: samhain_smut, Cunnilingus, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Halloween, Hufflepuff, Non-Penetrative Sex, Post-Hogwarts, Romance, Sex Magic, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:23:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozarka/pseuds/Rozarka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitterly disappointed in Zacharias, Susan decides to use a spell on the first Samhain night after the Battle to get him out of her system for good. But even as a magically induced sexual fantasy, Zach is contrary and uncooperative — to the point of insisting that he's real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream As Real As Life

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to a prompt for this year's [Samhain_Smut](http://samhain_smut.livejournal.com/) fest, and originally posted [here](http://samhain-smut.livejournal.com/35642.html). Thanks and smooches to anise_anise for beta and to annanith for brainstorming and cheerleading. <3

 

The rising moon struggled rain-dimmed and low over the hills around the village of Hogsmeade. It was dismal weather for a bonfire festival, and a strange kind of mood on this first Halloween after a war that had seen so many of the revellers' friends and kin dead. But on the surface of things, at least, music, alcohol and youth seemed to help. There were costumes, dancing and laughter, and if some expressions seemed grim and dark, that too could be in the spirit of Samhain when all was said and done.

Susan Bones sat on the outskirt of a small group of her friends at the edge of the clearing, making her way through a bottle of ale and watching the others laugh and horse around to keep the night's ghosts away. Hannah was dressed up as a barmaid, which had been met with approval from the male Hufflepuffs, Ernie clanged heavily about as a knight in shining armour, and Justin had applied injudicious amounts of some shimmering pearlescent stuff on his hair and skin and was trying to pass himself off as a Veela (he kept having to explain what he was).

Susan was dressed up as Susan, in plain good robes and a warm turtleneck jumper, with her brown hair in its usual long plait and an Impervious charm cast against the rain. Sally-Anne had tutted and pushed her own Kneazle-eared headpiece down over Susan's hair — as she said, to make it seem like Susan had made at least a nod to an effort.

Ernie was sending her glances that were perhaps intended to be discreet, but subtlety wasn't his forte. She wasn't at all surprised when he heaved himself up onto his feet, took a few steps and dropped on the ground again beside her. He followed her gaze to the tall, blond boy who was walking around in the clearing, seeming to scour the ground, occasionally asking a question of people he passed. Zach Smith was dressed in an evil mockery of the Appleby Arrows' gear, complete with sagging trousers, a bandaged arm and a broken arrow emblazoned on his chest. The Arrows were of course arch-rivals to the Wimbourne Wasps, the team that had picked him up at the autumn try-outs, and Zach had fended off irate Arrows supporters all night.

"I expected him to come as a wasp," Ernie said, glancing at her. "He told me that if he did, everyone would simply think he was a Hufflepuff."

"Well, he used to be," Susan said flatly. "That is, for a diluted value of Hufflepuff."

Ernie fell silent and took a pull of his keg of mead, but the sidelong look he gave her was troubled. "Come on," he murmured finally. "Weren't you the one who told me in third year that for someone with a father like Zach's, he's actually turned out pretty decent?"

"That was before he decided to turn out like his bloody selfish father, wasn't it? What's he looking for?" she added, to divert Ernie's attention from the lecture she sensed brewing.

"Says he lost his bracelet, the one we gave him for his birthday last week. He's pretty upset, I think. He took it off for the pumpkin carving contest, and afterwards it was gone. I know he's not the most gracious of recipients, but that bracelet meant a lot to him. It was a good idea for a present."

"Yeah? He should have looked after it better, then."

Ernie gave her that look again. "Why can't you give him a break, Suse? You two used to be like peas in a pod."

"Maybe that's why?" she retorted sharply. She shrugged. "I stay out of his way. I don't give him any trouble." Annoyed by the pinching headpiece, she took it off, tossing it with some ire into the grass. "He hasn't looked lonely to me. Now that he's a pro player he's got all those stupid bimbos flocking to him. He's obviously happy about that."

"You think?" Ernie said pensively. "Then why does he tire of each one after a few days?"

Susan tilted her head at him, a sarcastic reply on the tip of her tongue, but instead she felt her lips reluctantly turn up to a smile. His eyes reflected stubborn good will, his face was flushed from the mead and the cold or possibly from the heat of his heavy costume, and he looked like he genuinely couldn't figure out why a nineteen year old boy would go through girlfriends like a fox in a chicken coop. A knight in shining armour, indeed. Why couldn't _he_ be the one to make her heart beat faster?

"You are pure of heart, Ernie Macmillan. I like that about you." She got up on her feet. "All this wet smoke has given me a headache. I'm going home."

"Aw, do you have to?" He struggled up to stand, too. "It's not even midnight yet!"

She shrugged, and leaned in to hug him in half-hearted apology. "I'll be better company next year."

Being Ernie, he hugged her whole-heartedly back. "You're always good company. I'll get someone to break me out of this bloody thing so I can help Zach look. Will you be safe to get home?"

"I only had one ale," she said, lowering her gaze as he drew back. She dropped a hand into the deep pocket of her robe and fingered the leather bracelet, counting the small silver charms on it. One, two, three. "Say good-bye to the others for me?" 

Drawing her wand from the pocket, she Apparated home.

 

****

Back in her Diagon Alley bedsit, she undressed, put on her bathrobe and slipped into her landlady's bathroom and had a quick, hot shower, washing the smoke out of her hair and off her skin. She went back to her room, put on knickers, warm socks and a big t-shirt, and set about making her preparations.

Half an hour after she'd come home, the clock on the wall struck a chime for midnight, and Susan closed her eyes, held her hand inside the crescent circle of candles, and dropped the single strand of long blonde hair and the bracelet into the still glowing ashes in the bowl. As the flames flared up, she swung her wand over the table and spoke the charm firmly. " _Invocario Zacharias_!"

A muted light seemed to fill the room for a moment, rush into every corner and against every surface and push at its boundaries. The tension intensified for a second, two, three... and then the light receded back into the bowl and the flames cooled and died.

She gasped, eyes round as saucers. There he _was_. Zach, standing in the middle of the room, bringing with him wafts of a druggy scent of bonfire smoke and honeyed mead. From his blond hair to his bare feet, he didn't have a stitch of clothing on. 

"It worked," she murmured in a daze, staring at him. Merlin, he looked _good_ without clothes on. She knew it was just the charm presenting him in a physical form that appealed to her, but the last time she saw him in swimming trunks at the lake — years ago — he'd still been a whip thin boy. And this was what the contours under his clothes had hinted at the last couple of years, all that long supple muscle, his torso slender and tapering from broad shoulders to narrow hips.

He appeared absolutely gobsmacked, but at her unabashed scrutiny, he snatched a pillow and held it in front of his middle, his expression turning irate.

"Susan? What the fuck kind of idiot prank is this? Is this something the others set you up to?" He peered into the corners of the room as though expecting every Hufflepuff in their year to come jumping out pointing and laughing, and she rolled her eyes.

"Of course not." She was still breathless with astonishment that it had _worked_. "It's just me here. And you. Except, well, you're not really here. You're just a figment of my imagination, so believe me, you have _nothing_ to worry about."

He did a double take, his lips parting on astonishment. "Say again?"

She couldn't help it that her face heated up. Idiotic, to blush for such a cowardly git — worse, a cowardly git who wasn't actually here — but it all seemed so lifelike. Which was, of course, the point. She gave a curt nod towards the objects on the table. "It's an old Samhain spell to summon the one you want to you in a dream as real as life."

"The one you want?" he repeated incredulously, throwing out his free arm in a frustrated gesture seemingly intended to draw attention to the lack of logic in her claim. " _Me_? Whenever I meet you since this summer, you act like I'm dirt under your shoe!"

"Since the Battle, you mean?" Susan raised her chin as she saw his jaw tighten, giving him a defiant look. "So? Sexual attraction isn't logical. You're a contrary, insufferable prat, but that kind of turns me on, to be honest, and while you're unfortunately a disloyal coward, you're also a great Quidditch player, which is definitely a turn-on, and you're fit."

She wasn't sure he was listening, because his gaze had fastened on an object in the central of the little magical tableau, and he turned furious, accusing eyes at her. "My bracelet! It was you who took it!" He reached for it, but she stepped between him and the table, blocking him physically from taking the bracelet.

"I needed something treasured of yours, for the spell. It's not damaged. I'll hand it back to you — I mean, the real you — when we're done."

His expression turned flat. His head tilted to the side, and from the look in his eyes, he seemed to be questioning her sanity. "And you believe this is a _dream_."

"Well, a magically invoked erotic fantasy," she specified. "See, that's why you're naked."

She studied him with as much dispassion as she was able to feign. His chest and arms and legs were dusted with dark blonde hairs, and there was a treasure trail down his flat stomach that she felt quite excited about. Zach followed her gaze down to the pillow and blushed fiercely. Cursing under his breath, he snatched the embroidered tablecloth off her coffee table and wrapped it quickly around his hips, before tossing the pillow on the bed.

"For what it's worth," he said tersely, "this feels extremely real to me."

Susan raised her eyebrows. "It's doing a pretty amazing job of emulating reality, if I say so myself. Wouldn't have been right without you whining and grousing."

"Couldn't you just have used one of those bloody Daydream Charms that Weasley sells?" He curled his lip a bit at the Weasley name.

"Haven't tried the Daydream Charms, but I hear that you can tell that it's a fantasy. I needed this to feel real." She pressed her lips together, then added with fraying patience, "So real that I'll get you out of my system. That's all."

He raised a hand and pushed his hair back. "I'm in your system," he restated warily, more like trying out the taste of the words than asking a question.

Susan grimaced. "For a while now. It's a bother."

He let out a heavy sigh, but then a guarded smirk tugged on his lips. "Heck, how about just approaching me and telling me so? You've been about as pleasant to be around as a pms-ing Umbridge, lately, but you're quite easy on the eyes. I might have indulged you for old friendship's sake."

His arrogance and the unflattering comparison made her temper flare, at last. "No, you would have been a grouchy boor about shooting me down," she snapped. "Don't pretend that you wouldn't."

His gaze turned oblique as he regarded her. "Then what makes you think I won't be, now?"

"You won't shoot me down because you're not real, just part of _my_ spell and bound by it, and I don't mind if you're a grouchy boor. I'm used to it." She bit her lip, and sat down on the edge of the bed with an exasperated look up at him. "Well, aren't you going to do something?"

He scrubbed his hand down his jaw. And then he laughed. 

"This is crazy. So sure that you're right, are you?"

Despite her face burning in annoyance at his amusement, she held his gaze with stubborn confidence. All right, there had been that Splinching incidence in Apparition class, the memory of which still made Apparition one of her least favourite things, but apart from that she was always careful and thorough with her magic. "I never make mistakes with my spells." 

"Well, Miss Infallible, maybe you did just this once. All I know is that a few minutes ago I was dancing with Padma Patil at the festival. I can only guess that she's left holding on to my shirt, pants and wand."

"Patil?" That information didn't sit easy with her. Patil wasn't a bimbo, she was beautiful and _smart_.

"I'm a figment of your imagination, aren't I, so don't tell me that you're jealous." He walked to the window, where three oranges lay in a bowl on the sill. Testing a couple of the fruits, he picked one up, tossed it once from hand to hand and started peeling it. "I'm almost willing to believe it's a dream, as you never say such lovely things about me in real life." He slowly tore and unwound a long strip of peel from the fruit. "A great Quidditch player. Fit. And I turn you on. That's _nice_. Can I please have that in writing, Bones? Just in case this does turn out to be real?"

"You're such an arse." Susan scowled at him. Those were _good_ oranges, the first of the winter season, and she had to remind herself that he couldn't _really_ take any. The aromatic scent was filling the room, tickling her nose, heady somehow. _Real._ With a creeping sense of unease, she stood up from the bed, her mind raking back over the ritual she'd just performed. But no, she'd done the spell exactly right. And Morag MacDougal had assured her that it worked.

Zach was tearing out a segment of the orange, popping it into his mouth while regarding her shrewdly. "Wondering if the orange will be gone when I am?" 

Incensed, Susan looked around for something to throw at him, but all she found was her wand in her hand, and she raised it at him, lips parting to utter a hex — which one, she wasn't sure.

"What?" Now he seemed almost indulgent, smirking at her. "You're going to Imperio a figment of your imagination into submission? Maybe it would be a better strategy to work on your seduction skills, Suse."

Stung, she dropped her wand to her side. "You—" Tears of frustration were pressing on her eyelids, and she blinked furiously. "You're the most useless sexual fantasy, ever, Zach! And don't say another time that you're real, because you _can't_ be real, because if you are then I've made the most horrid idiot of myself and I simply refuse to accept that!"

Some quick, sharp flash of emotion passed over his eyes; alarm or even regret? Just a moment and it was gone. He put the remaining half of the orange back in the bowl and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand before meeting her gaze again. "Um, the comment on your seduction skills. That was uncalled for," he said carefully.

She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. "Just _leave_!"

"I can't do that. I'm not real, apparently. Even if I were, I don't have any pants on." He raised both arms, looking down his body. "Nor a wand to Apparate with."

Uncertainly, she stared at him, trying to figure out why he was suddenly agreeing with her. He eyed her for another moment and then pushed away from the wall. When his fingers cupped her cheek, the aromatic scent of the orange zest lingered on his skin, bitter-sweet and intoxicating. 

"I've always wanted to see your hair like this," he murmured, and his other hand trailed gently through her hair at the side of her face, lifting the waist-long strands. He gave her a strange, wry little smile. "You could always try a _Finite Incantatem_."

She closed her eyes shut against the threat of tears, shaking her head fiercely.

His whisper tickled her temple. "Scared it won't work? Or scared it might?"

"I'm not scared."

"I think you are. Else, why go to all this trouble instead of tackling me upfront and saying you want sex with me. You've never been a coward." A pause, where both of them evidently thought the same, and he spared her saying it. "That would be me."

"Too bloody true." Her teeth were on edge. "How the hell would I approach you? You're such a... a _slut_ , since the war, since your big fat Quidditch career, it's not like you're lacking in female company."

"That doesn't make any sense. If I'm easy, I should be all the easier to come on to." He frowned. "Besides, I'm not a slut. I've never cheated on any girl I've been with."

Susan gave a choked, sad laugh. "It doesn't count as serial monogamy if you're with each girl less than a week, Zach!"

"Yeah? I guess I didn't get a rep for being hard to please for no reason." His eyes narrowed and he abruptly pushed his hair back from his face with both hands, something uncertain passing over his features. "You _are_ jealous. I didn't think you gave a fuck."

The awkward, boyish gesture, the flat way he said it, made her mind trip over the words, but she was long beyond hope and ever since May, her heart had such hurting, jagged edges. "Yeah? You were dead on about that, then." She paused, pressed her lips together, averting her gaze. "You weren't trying to make me, were you? Jealous?"

He didn't answer. He stepped away from her, and just stood there, barely out of reach, watching her with an emotion too intense for her to dare to identify. 

"Why can't you forgive me?" It burst out of him as though the words had been teetering on the tip of his tongue for all those five long months since the grey dawn when she'd first turned her back on him, and Susan just swallowed and stared at him, astonished.

Then bitter rage flared in her. "Because you've never asked for forgiveness! You just came sauntering back when the Battle was as good as over and assumed it as a given!"

"Do you think it was easy for me to come back? Do you think I expected a warm welcome? Coming back, that _was_ me asking for forgiveness. And I didn't know then that the Battle was coming to a close."

"No, you're just a lucky bastard, aren't you?" 

He stilled and watched her. "I wasn't the only one of ours who left. Wayne did, and Sally-Anne. And half the Ravenclaws, at least. You seem to have no problem with them. Besides, Ernie and Hannah forgave me. Justin. Megan. Stephen. Why can't _you_?"

"Because they didn't count you as their best friend! They hadn't depended on you to be there for them!" Desperate, aching, finally at the end of her rope, there was no way she could stop the forbidden words from flying out. "And they weren't idiots enough to be in love with you!"

It was strange; she wanted it unsaid at once, and yet it was such a physical relief to get it off her chest, the heart-wrenching disappointment, that she felt almost drunk with the release for a moment, light-headed and dizzy. And Zach... Zach stood there wide eyed, agape, looking as though he were lying bound to the train tracks with the Hogwarts Express coming thundering towards him at full speed.

Susan gave a shaky, cracked laugh. "Don't panic," she said. "I got over that, believe me. I got over you."

He was quiet for long seconds while he tried to get his expression back under control. "No," he said slowly at last, as if he were just grasping something. "I'm in your system. You said so yourself."

"That's just physical," she snapped.

"Susan." He held her gaze, all his arrogant defences gone. His arms were hanging at his sides with fists clenched, both helpless and braced at once. "I don't regret anything in my life as much as I do leaving that night. I'd promised my father not to do anything stupid, and I didn't think Potter had a snowball's chance in hell, but—" A deep breath expanded his chest, and rushed out again. "Screw Potter; I should have been there for my friends. For _you_. I stewed over it half the night before I admitted it. It felt so damn wrong not to be there. And my father kept ordering me to stay... but I should have gone back at once, no question. I never should have left at all."

He came closer, finally, and it was only when he raised a hand in a hesitant gesture to smooth over her cheek that she realised she was crying, had been crying for a while. But maybe it was all right, because Zach's gruff, low voice didn't sound too steady either. "I never asked your forgiveness, because I thought I had no right to. But if you allow it, then I beg you, now, to forgive me. There's nothing in the world that matters to me more."

And, oh, the stilted way he worded it, that was what started to thaw the frozen defences around her heart. That formal, awkward manner in the face of strong emotion was so quintessentially Zach, her best friend from before all the horrible things happened, and she softened against him, but the tears were still falling.

"I was so afraid. Ernie and Hannah and Justin had each other, and Megan and Stephen, but you weren't _there_."

"I know." His hand shook, perceptibly, as he stroked the hair away from her face with great tenderness. "I don't know that I can ever make it up to you, but I give you my word that I'll try to do better." 

Her head was bowed and she tried to grasp at what was happening. Or not. "Zach," she whispered sadly. "This isn't real."

"How can you know that? Are you sure, really? I think I feel a great deal too autonomous to be a fantasy."

Susan shook her head stubbornly. She'd been panicked that it _was_ real, only minutes ago, mortified at the thought, and now she was even more scared that it wasn't and that she'd wake up in the middle of the night with an empty heart and the bitter taste of ashes in her mouth.

Long fingers tipped her chin up. Zach's face was close, his beautiful, blue-green eyes half shutting as he moved in even closer. His skin, his hair, smelled of bonfire smoke, and his lips were a devastating soft warmth pressing down on her own. The aromatic, sweet-tart taste of oranges mingled with the salt on her own lips, and she parted her lips at his urging, tasted him slowly. His tongue snaked out and slid along her own; smooth, hot temptation in her mouth. 

Deep in her belly, want surged and rolled over as glassy-bright and irresistible as a wave, and she slid her arms around his neck, pressing against him. He was stirring against her belly, growing longer, harder, fast. "Can I have you?" she murmured against his lips, sliding a hand down towards the draped fabric around his hips.

"Wait—" He stopped her with his fingers around her wrist, leading her hand away, his eyes heavy-lidded as he looked down in her face, and she _shook_. 

"You bastard, don't lead me on if you don't—" 

"Don't want you?" He rubbed his hips against her in a blatantly pleasure-seeking motion, his breath shuddering out of him on a low moan. "Hell, of course I want you! But if I think this is real, and fuck you while you think it's a fantasy... that _would_ make me a bastard. The worst kind. Wouldn't it?"

Susan shook her head vehemently, a laugh of relief bursting from her throat. "I don't care. I'm _taking_ you, Zach, real or not. Listen, if it's real — I still want you. That's the reason you're here, after all."

"I suppose that makes sense," he murmured, eyes glazing over as her hand stroked the firm length tenting the fabric at his front.

"Bloody right it does. Don't you dare go all noble on me now — don't you _dare_." Her hands moved, unsteady, to tug at the edge of the fabric wrapped around his waist. She yanked it free and pushed him a little away, her gaze falling to his erection as it was revealed.

"Oh." Heat washed into her face, gratification and shyness and amusement in a volatile mixture of desire. Her hand wrapped around his girth, stroking slowly once to the tip. "Definitely a fantasy," she said, with an abashed grin at him.

There was a breathless smile and a moan in his voice as his lips brushed her ear. "Even if it is, that doesn't necessarily mean the reality is less impressive, you realise." His hands came up to cradle her face, and he kissed her with a heavy yearning that made her _ache_. She moaned, too, her hands moving restlessly to his hips, his chest, and then falling to tug at the edge of her t-shirt.

Zach helped her pull it up and over her head, gasping as he broke the kiss for it. His hooded gaze took in her breasts and then his fingers followed, his palms weighing them, thumbs flicking over her tightening nipples. The sensation sparked trails of fire to her clit, a warm heavy pulse waking up between her legs. She swayed, her head hanging to watch his fingers on her as she whimpered in pleasure, moving her feet to widen her stance. The implication wasn't lost on him, judging by the way he groaned and dropped a hand to rub two fingers against her outside the crotch of her knickers. 

Susan clutched convulsively at his hips, the noises rising from her throat far more desperate and abandoned than when she did this to herself. Oh, she'd wanted this for so long. Had such fantasies about him, some of them downright dirty and depraved, she was sure, but none of them had ever felt like a fraction of this.

Floor and ceiling shifted as she found herself lifted off her feet. Zach held her to his chest and carried her to her bed, and she laughed when he dropped her the last few inches in a giddy fall. And then he came over her, prowling, with a glint of responding laughter in his eyes. Sucking firmly, briefly, on one nipple and then the other, making her _writhe_. Her face was warm and she followed his gaze down her body. His hand settled flat on her belly, just above the edge of her knickers. Her silly, white, day-of-the-week-with-a-teddy-bear-print knickers. Suddenly she cringed. Sure it had been just a spell, but couldn't she have made a little bit of effort? She still had her thick night socks on! And how long had it been since she shaved her legs?

"I have other knickers," she blurted, and blew hair out of her flushed face as she tried to toe off the socks. "Nicer ones."

"These are nice." Smirking, Zach leaned down to kiss her, but his husky, ragged voice belied the aloofness of the smirk. "See, what makes these knickers sexy is the contrast between how _nice_ they are on the outside" — he teased his fingers under the edge of her knickers, and her stomach muscles bunched up as her breath caught and she forgot all about the socks or the state of her legs — "and how _sopping wet_ you are underneath them."

She would have protested against the crudeness, but as he whispered to her, his fingers slipped lower, parting her folds, finding her exactly as he'd stated, and her breath exploded out of her on a mindless moan. His fingers gliding on her flesh let her _feel_ how slick she was, how swollen with readiness and want. He pressed a finger inside her, larger than her own, enough to make her wince a bit as he slid it slowly in and out, but the hollow need it woke in her made her throw her head back on the pillow. "Oh," she managed, choked, "oh, please—"

His thumb pressed down on her clit, rubbing in firm circles, and her hands scrambled for purchase in the sheets, clenching into the fabric. Tension coiled under his touch and she was gasping, panting, breathing so hard she felt light-headed. Merlin, he was good at this, and she wasn't sure if she was grateful for that or seething with jealousy — oh yes, she was grateful, so grateful, because after a little while of that, the tension snapped and set her free, soaring, crying out as the pleasure reverberated through her body like the echoes of a great chiming bell.

She had no time to come down properly before Zach slipped his finger out of her, tugged her knickers down her legs and moved up to lie over her again. He took hold of her legs and raised them up, urging her to wrap them around his waist, and the hard, thick length of his penis slid between her folds, rubbed over her still sensitive clit, and suddenly she was reeling.

"Is this all right?" he asked, his gaze finding hers.

"The charm," she managed, her mouth dry. "My wand."

"Don't be silly, Suse." He kissed her soundly, smiling at her. "I'm not going to take your virginity while you're not sure it's actually happening. But I really need to come, if you don't have any objections, or my prick's going to _implode_."

"That would be sad," she said weakly. She was torn between embarrassment that he'd guessed exactly the extent of her inexperience, and relief that she hadn't had to say a thing.

He sighed as he started sliding his erection more firmly between her legs. "I'm glad... _ah_... I'm not the only one who feels that way." His gaze fluttered half closed, an expression of such abandoned enjoyment on his face that she found herself gasping with it. Susan watched him carefully and moved a hand to touch his hard length, letting it slide through her palm as he moved. It felt good for her, too, not quite enough, but she thought it _would_ be, if only — blushing, but determined, she pressed down harder, fingers curled around him, making him rub firmly, wetly over her clit as she began moving with him to meet every thrust. 

Zach groaned at the squeeze of her fingers, and when he looked down between their bodies, his eyes flared hot and wide. "Yes," he said, his voice shaking. "Oh, Suse, that's so sexy, I..."

He leaned down closer, practically bending her in half, one hand palming and squeezing a breast before taking the nipple between two fingers, rolling and pinching it, as gently as he seemed able to. His fine motor skills were suffering, evidently, and the kiss he gave her was sloppy, hot with their ragged breath and just glorious, and then his hips jerked against her, he shuddered and gasped, and suddenly her hand was wet.

He sank down over her, a boneless weight for some seconds before his hands moved to ease her aching thighs down from their bent position and he propped himself on his elbows. "Sorry," he panted, "you didn't—?"

"It's all right," she said, awkwardly wiping her wet hand on the sheets, "I did, earlier," but he was moving down her body, still panting as he put his face between her legs, and his breath was hot on her a second before his tongue pressed down on her clit. He licked her in long, hard strokes, and Susan slid her fingers into his hair, reduced to soft cries and moans as she drowned in the sensation, oh, even better than she'd imagined that his mouth on her must feel, and her thighs tightened around his head and her hips rocked against him until bolts of pleasure arched her trembling body over and over.

He crawled up her body and she rolled over on her side to curl into his arms, pressing her lips together on a flustered giggle as her fingers touched his softening erection. "It did implode."

"It so did not. It exploded all over you, didn't it?" he retorted with a tired grin, stretching over her body for her wand to cast a cleaning charm on her hand and belly. With that done, his hand soothed down her sweaty back, and they regarded each other, face to face on her pillow. Zach broke the silence, his voice softer, now. "So, did that get me out of your system?"

She shook her head mutely, and he kissed her. "Good," he muttered. "You seem to be firmly settled in mine."

Susan wasn't sure what to make of that. "All those other girls," she whispered, and Zach actually seemed to blush, if she wasn't mistaken in the dark of the room, giving her a familiar, stubborn look.

"I could see that you didn't like it, which was more of a reaction than I managed to get from you otherwise, so that seemed like a good reason to go on doing it. So I reckon... hell yeah, I was trying to make you jealous, but most of all I was simply trying to make you give a damn."

"I did. I mean... I do." She touched his cheek, and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. "How did you know that I — um. That I hadn't... before?"

"That you're a virgin?" He gave her a lop-sided smile. "You don't remember? You told me yourself, last year. That night you'd had detention with the Carrows. I sat with you, and you were high on Ernie's painkiller potion. You told me a few things that I think you'd kick my arse for reminding you of now. For instance that you didn't want to die before you'd experienced cunnilingus. I reckon that's one worry off your mind, now." He chuckled as she groaned and tried to crawl under the pillow, digging her out again and securing her firmly in his arms. "I suppose you could have done it with someone since then, after the war... but I don't think so. I was paying attention."

"You did? I'm glad I wasn't the only one." Susan felt like she was floating on clouds, as soft and soaring, and just as uncertain. "What do we do now?" she whispered.

"Sleep." Zach stroked her hair. "And see what happens after that?"

"But what if you aren't here when I wake up? What if you're not—"

"I'll be here when you wake up," he murmured, squeezing her a little tighter to his frame.

"How can you be so sure?" she protested, frustrated. He sounded like he was ready to roll over and sleep and his sated state was making him simplify the problem. But his eyes blinked open, and he seemed to consider her question seriously.

"All right. If this _is_ just a fantasy, then obviously your subconscious is telling you things. Smart things. If I'm not here when you wake up, then find me, all right? And tell me everything you've said to me tonight."

It wasn't enough to calm her worries, because really, if he were just a fantasy, a reflection of her own desires, then what was his reassurance worth? But she was exhausted, too, after the physical release as well as the emotional excesses, and finally, with his arms around her and his breath slowing close to her ear, she closed her eyes and followed him into sleep.

***

She woke brutally, dizzy, sitting bolt upright and staring bleary-eyed into darkness that was full of a banging noise.

The bed was empty but for her, and even before she'd managed to gather her wits enough to completely recall last night, she flinched at the implication. _Not real_. The realisation settled as cold and heavy in the pit of her stomach as a giant lump of lead.

But the room smelled of... oranges, and... something else, which didn't seem right somehow.

Before she could think more on that, it dawned on her that the noise she was hearing, the one that had woken her up, was someone hammering their fist on her door. And now she heard Zach's voice — "Susan! Are you home? Wake up!" — followed by more banging. One floor down, her landlady was offering her opinion, too, in the form of an indistinct yell and her cane rapping angrily at the ceiling.

It was still dead of night, she realised, nothing but moonlight filtering through the curtains. She stumbled out of bed, still in her t-shirt and knickers, and grabbed her bathrobe and flung it on, hurrying to open the door as Zach shouted her name once more.

"Yes?" she said warily as she inched the door ajar, but he pushed it open and strode in. 

She closed the door and stared at him. He had his outer robes on, but he seemed hastily changed out of his costume underneath it — he was barefoot and hadn't even done up the top buttons of his jeans, which sagged precariously low on his narrow hips. He seemed unconcerned about that, though, swivelling on the spot to face her, his expression bewildered as he took her hand and then pulled her into a desperate embrace, his face pressing into her hair. "I had this strange dream." His voice was rough and unclear, tearful almost, although she couldn't see his face to make sure. "I dreamed that you forgave me."

Susan stood still in his arms, breathing in the scent of woodsmoke on his skin — and something else, that made her blush as she tried to think, to figure out what the hell was going on. "Was that the only thing that happened in the dream?" she asked softly.

She felt him draw an unsteady breath, and he was quiet for long seconds, as though to deliberate whether to answer or not. "No," he said warily at last. "There was more. It was a good dream. I blacked out at the party, apparently; from too much drink, at least that's what Ernie said, but I hadn't had that much, and I've never dreamed when I've done that. Ernie sent me home and told me to sleep it off, but I couldn't... the dream felt so _real_."

Could it be? Could it _really_ be? She stepped out of his embrace and took his hand, leading him further into her room. Silently, she pointed to the table with the remnants of the objects for the spell.

Zach stared, then shook his head as if to clear the sleep from it. "My bracelet."

"I used it in a spell," she whispered. "A spell to bring the one you want to you in a dream as real—"

"—As life. You don't have to explain it. I remember the spell. And my bracelet." He turned in the room, gaze wandering from one thing to the next, settling first on the embroidered piece of fabric draped over her coffee table. "And the tablecloth." He walked over to the bowl in the window sill, Susan trailing along, her hand still held in his. There were three golden fruits in the bowl. "And the oranges." He turned to her, and now his sharp face was soft with wonder. "And the bed. And you."

"I remember all of that as well." She swallowed hard. "Zach... the room smells of oranges."

He watched her, and his lips finally quirked up in a hesitant smirk. "And we smell of sex."

She blushed to the tips of her ears, but grinned back, so glad that he'd _smiled_ when he said it. "Then it _was_ real?"

His hand came up to drag through his sleep-ruffled hair. "If we both remember it the same," he said carefully, "I suppose it's up to us to decide whether it was." 

"Then I say it was just as real as we are." She ventured another smile, raised a hand and gently touched his tip-tilted nose. "As real as the nose on your face."

Zach took a deep breath, averting his eyes as he caught her hand in his and pressed an almost diffident kiss to her fingertips. "Then... you do forgive me?"

She felt something clench in her chest because his voice was so quiet, and because of all of it, _that_ was what he'd focused on from the moment he walked in the door. Ever since he'd turned up in Hogwarts' courtyard, that grey dawn in May, and she'd turned her back on him, she'd wanted to punish him, had wanted it so bitterly that she'd failed to realise how much she wanted — _needed_ — to forgive him, too.

"Yes," she said, her voice just as quiet. "I do." She went to the table, picked up his bracelet and blew ashes off it, then came back, and he stood still for her as she fastened it around his wrist. Her fingers touched the silver charms. A scorpion, for his birth sign, a wasp, for his Quidditch team, and a badger, for his house. "Please forgive me, too. You were right, you know. There were others who left, and I never judged them the same way."

Zach shook his head, frowning. "That was just an excuse," he said. "You had a right to expect better of me."

"Maybe I had. But if so, doesn't that go both ways, too? Seven years of friendship should count for more than one mistake." She slid her arms around him, tilting her face up to give him a tentative smile. "I appreciate your talent for arguing, Zach, but I've got another talent of yours fresh in mind." She felt his hands slide down to rest on her hips, and she pressed her lips to his and cupped his face in both of her hands. "If, you know, it is something you'd care to repeat."

She could feel his lips turn up a smile against her own when her meaning dawned on him. "Yeah?" he murmured, breathless. "Well, I did promise that even if it were a fantasy, you'd be just as impressed if it were real."

Susan laughed, but her laughter turned into a soft moan when his tongue licked into her mouth and touched the tip of her own. And, damn it, she was still wearing silly knickers, thick socks and unshaved legs, and the moment would soon be gone if she were to do something about it, but Zach was sliding a hand over her bottom and the other into her hair and kissing her in a way that made her weak-kneed and oblivious to such piddly details, again. 

"Go on, then," she ordered him with a whimper, twining her arms around his neck instead. "Impress me."

And that's exactly what Zach did.

 

-end-


End file.
